South Sudan rebel leader returns to the capital

Associated Press

Published 1:41 pm, Tuesday, April 26, 2016

JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan’s rebel leader Riek Machar returned to the capital Juba Tuesday to become vice president and try to end the civil war that in 21/2 years has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

After landing at Juba International Airport, where doves were released and a welcoming crowd ululated, Machar briefly addressed the press before driving to the presidential palace to be sworn in as first vice president to President Salva Kiir, according to a peace deal signed eight months ago under intense international pressure. Machar flew from Gambella, Ethiopia, just across the border from his rebel headquarters in South Sudan.

“I’m happy to be back,” Machar told reporters at the airport. “The war was vicious. We have lost a lot of people in it, and we need to bring our people together so that they can unite, reconcile, heal the wounds, the mental wounds that they have. ... There will be challenges ahead, there will be obstacles, but as long as there is political will we can overcome all these challenges, all these obstacles.”

Government and rebel soldiers stood silently side by side at the airport. Kiir did not come to the airport for Machar’s return.

The August peace deal calls for a two-year transitional government of ministers and parliamentarians from the two sides before new elections.

The war started when fighting began in Juba between Dinka and Nuer soldiers, before government troops massacred Nuer citizens in the city, sparking revenge attacks against Dinka elsewhere in the country, according to an African Union commission of inquiry.

Machar, an ethnic Nuer, was Kiir’s vice president before the war. Kiir, a Dinka, fired him in mid-2013. Machar then vowed to run against Kiir for the presidency, sparking a chain of events that led to the outbreak of conflict in December that year that ripped open deeply ethnic hatred.